1,” which Gaskell wrote with her husband, is published by Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. A daughter, Margaret Emily, known as Meta, is born. Queen Victoria assumes the throne of England.

1838Dickens’s Oliver Twist is published.
1840“Clopton Hall,” a short essay recalling a visit to Clopton House during Gaskell’s school days, is included in William Howitt’s Visits to Remarkable Places. Thomas Hardy is born.
1842A daughter, Florence, is born.
1843William Wordsworth is appointed poet laureate.
1844A son, William, is born.
1845While on family vacation in Wales, the infant William contracts scarlet fever and dies. Elizabeth distracts herself from her grief by focusing on her writing. Friedrich Engels’s Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England (The Condition of the Working Class in England) is published.
1846A daughter, Julia Bradford, is born. All Corn Laws are repealed.
1847“Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras” appears in Howitt’s Journal, published by fellow Unitarian William Howitt. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is published. The 1847 Factory Act shortens the work-day of women and children to a maximum of ten hours.
1848Gaskell’s first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of a Manchester Life, is published anonymously, although the author’s identity is immediately uncovered. The sympathetic portrait of mill workers and their unbearable living conditions infuriates Manchester factory owners. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (Communist Manifesto) is published. Major rebellions take place in France, Austria, Prussia, and other European countries. William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair is published.
1849Gaskell’s writing finds many admirers, and she meets Dickens, Thackeray, and Wordsworth, among other well-known authors.
1850Elizabeth meets Charlotte Brontë, and the two become close friends. Several works, including “The Heart of John Middle-ton,” are published in Charles Dickens’s weekly journal Household Words. The Moorland Cottage, a long short story, is published in book form.
1851The first two chapters of Cronford—often considered Gaskell’s most popular work—are published in Household Words (the final installments will appear in 1853). “The Deserted Mansion” appears in Fraser’s Magazine.
1853Ruth is published in book form; the novel stirs controversy because it questions the conventional wisdom that the life of a “fallen woman” necessarily ends in ruin. Cranford is published in book form. The stories “Cumberland Sheep Shearers” and “The Squire’s Story,” among others, appear in Household Words.
1854The novel North and South, which addresses societal problems, is serialized in Household Words. Gaskell meets Florence Nightingale in London.
1855Charlotte Brontë dies. Her father asks Gaskell to write Charlotte’s biography. North and South is published in book form. Household Words publishes “An Accursed Race” and “Half a LifeTime Ago.” A group of Gaskell’s short stories is published as the book Lizzie Leigh and Other Stories. Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone reaches Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River.
1857The Life of Charlotte Brontë is published. Although it is praised by most, some individuals depicted in the work threaten legal action over the way they are portrayed. The Matrimonial Causes Act enables women to inherit, own, and bequeath property.
1858“The Doom of the Griffiths” appears in the American monthly Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. “My Lady Ludlow” and other short stories are published in Household Words.
1859Round the Sofa and Other Tales, a book of short stories, is published. Several short stories appear in All the Year Round, Dickens’s new weekly magazine. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities are published.
1860Right at Last and Other Tales, a book of short stories, is published.
1861The American Civil War begins.
1862“Six Weeks at Heppenheim” is published in the Cornhill Magazine.
1863“A Dark Night’s Work” appears in All the Year Round. Cousin Phillis, a short novel, is serialized in the Cornhill Magazine, to be concluded early in 1864. The story’s country setting prefigures a more detailed portrait in Wives and Daughters. The novel Sylvia’s Lovers, set in Napoleon’s time, is published.
1864The first installments of Wives and Daughters appear in the Cornhill Magazine. The novel evokes the pastoral setting of Gaskell’s girlhood country home.
1865As a surprise for her husband’s future retirement, Gaskell buys a country house in Hampshire with the proceeds from her writing. Physically exhausted, and yet to complete the final installment of her novel, Gaskell dies suddenly on a visit to the house on November 12. She is buried at Brook Street Chapel in Knutsford.
1866The serial publication of Wives and Daughters ends. In lieu of the novel’s last installment, the editor of the Cornhill Magazine writes a note that explains how he thinks the author would have completed the book. The novel is released in book form.

INTRODUCTION

The book is very long and of an interest so quiet that not a few of its readers will be sure to vote it dull. In the early portion especially the details are so numerous and so minute that even a very well-disposed reader will be tempted to lay down the book and ask himself of what possible concern to him are the clean frocks and the French lessons of little Molly Gibson.